Recreational Poli Sci

Which Republicans (dis)liked Palin in 2008?
Her odd pre-implosion in Wasilla forced the MJ death-dirge on cable news to skip a beat last weekend, but Ms. Palin has been on my mind for other reasons lately. Sarah Palin has always been a head scratcher for me as an election watcher, really. Sure, the McCain campaign desperately needed something to grab some attention from the Obama juggernaut, and picking a veep who made everyone go “who?” may have held appeal. A Hail Mary pass in a size six dress, perhaps. I am now of the opinion that very few of the Democratic contenders would have lost that election to McCain/Palin, so probably Palin did not matter very much in the big picture. What is the head scratcher for me, especially vis-à-vis all this 2012 speculation, is figuring out who actually liked her among Republican identifiers in the electorate. She recently polled highest among the speculative 2012 red party crowd. She comes off as somewhat dim and not versed in issues foreign or domestic, though we probably should not trust her doppelganger to be fully responsible for the Palin biography. The ANES 2008 edition provides two ways to measure respondents’ impressions of Sarah Palin, besides their vote choice. There is the post-election feeling thermometer, asking respondents to rate their feelings of “warmth” toward a group or person.

So, whom to ask? Among the 2,000-some folks in the nationally representative sample, there are about 450-550 who identify as Republicans (including “leaners”) and answered all the questions I care about validly. Among them, I used basic econometrics to evaluate what attributes of Republicans correlate with liking Palin, holding the others constant. I didn’t bother with examining Dems—-I am concerned about the nomination.

First, what about the demographic variables that drive a lot of opinion differences in American politics? Consider income, age, and level of formal education: I expected poorer, older, lower formal education to like Palin. Regressing the Palin post-election thermometer on those three variables only yielded only one significant “predictor” (let’s not get into epistemological hand-wringing, ok?): age. Making mildly dubious linear assumptions, increasing age by ten years corresponds to an increase of 1.6 “degrees” of warmth toward Palin. Not a ton, but it’s a more substantively important predictor than income or education. Short version: Republican identifiers, as the graphic above depicts, generally liked Palin across all ages, but there were a handful of younger defectors from the like-Palin camp and almost none under age 60 really disliked her. The colors on the graphic correspond to how Republican respondents identified themselves as (red= strongly Republican, pink = less so).

What if we put a few more factors in the hopper? Imagine the above three, and adding gender, marital status, race/ethnicity, gun ownership, being “born again,” and past military service. I imagined that female Republicans might feeling warmer toward Palin because of some gender affinity, whites would like her more than that small sliver of nonwhite Republicans, gun-owning GOPers would like her more than unarmed GOPers, and “born again” evangelicals would respect her more highly than others because of her rather unambiguous pro-life decisions. Wrong and right, plus some other surprises.

Age……….+0.115**
Educ……. -0.163
Income…..+0.00694 
Female…..+0.684 
Married…..+3.543 
White…….+10.72**
Gunowner.+0.511 
Bornagain.+5.103**
Vet………..-8.518***

the number is analogous to the “slope” of the effect if you imagine the variable in question being on the x-axis and Palin affection being on the y. The asterisks denote statistical significance, and, oh yeah, n = 458

Age still drives a little bit of Palin affection, but being white and “born again” also substantially predict liking Alaska’s (ex-) governor. The two surprises to my eyes are the lack of a gun-ownership effect and the surprisingly robust distaste military veterans held for Palin in 2008. Why did Republican veterans in ’08 dislike Palin? Tune in next time for some more drill downs.